Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Month: April 2015 Page 2 of 3

The Three Types of Radicalism

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On April 20, 2015

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Painting: Washington Crossing the Delaware

Painting: Washington Crossing the Delaware

The term radical is used, often, without a clear understanding of what it means.  A radical is:

someone who believes the system can no longer change itself

That’s all.

Note that a one can be a radical for one’s self or own group while admitting that others can create change. For example, you could believe that America is an oligarchy with a mere democratic gloss. That admits that people who are rich enough can create change thru the system, but that almost no one else can. If you aren’t rich enough, you’re a radical; if you are, you probably regard yourself as a realist.

Radicals come in degrees. You might believe that voting in elections can’t change anything, but that it is possible to take over a party thru primaries and make change that way. You might believe that the best way to make change is to offer politicians good jobs and lots of money after their careers are over, so they take care of you while in power (and to make sure their family members are rich during their careers).  Since bribing politicians is, if not illegal, at least not supposed to be part of the system, this is radical as a matter of degree. (The size of bribes matters).

There are three basic types of radicals.

Passive Radicals

If, in a democratic society, you don’t vote, protest, run, or lobby because you figure the system is rigged, and you don’t do anything else to make a change, then you’re a passive radical. The passive radical has “opted out.” You can be a passive radical about various part of a society. For example, if you refuse to call the police or use the justice system, you are a radical about that part of the system.

Active Radicals

You’ve decided change isn’t possible thru the system and you’re doing something about it. Maybe you’re schooling your own kids, maybe you’ve set up an alternate justice system (common in many countries that suffer from anarchy or government failure), maybe you’ve gone off the grid and grow your own food.

Here, there are degrees as well. Say you create your own political party and it takes off (the Pirate Party in Sweden, for example). That indicates some faith that the change is possible thru the system, but you’ve chosen to create a new part of the system. In America, if you really believe in third parties, that’s fairly radical, given how long it’s been since any third party did more than act as a spoiler.

The key feature of an active radical is that they are trying to create change, but are trying to do it either outside the system, or by taking control of part of the system and then changing it. (The takeover of the Republican party, for example. The Netroots tried to take over Democrats in the 2000s and failed.)

Violent Radicals

A violent radical has decided that change will only come thru violence and has decided to apply that violence themselves or actively support those who do. Most readers’ minds will leap to Muslim radicals of various stripes, but much of union history is full of violent radicals: willing to fight the police or even the army toe-to-toe. Maidan protestors in Ukraine who engaged in violence qualify, and if the Bundy ranch protesters were serious about fighting, so did they. The Black Bloc members who aren’t police plants are another example.

So, for that matter, were the Founding Fathers of America, Parliament in the English revolution, and all who fought to overthrow the monarchy in England and elsewhere.

Radicalism is neither good nor bad, all it is is a belief that you can’t make change thru the existing power structures. Almost always, it is accompanied with a belief that a different type of system is required: Republicanism for American revolutionaries; the caliphate for ISIL; parliamentary democracy for the British or; communism for the Bolsheviks.

The job of the radical or revolutionary, peaceful or not, is to convince people that the system cannot fix itself; then to convince them to take action, whether that action is peaceful or violent. There have been many peaceful revolutions: FDR issued one in in America, for example, and so did both Reagan and George W. Bush, capped during the Obama presidency both by Obama actions such as continuing the vast destruction of civil liberties and the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizen’s United to allow unlimited money into the system.

The change from a patronage system to a professional bureaucracy was another radical idea, by the way, and changed American government hugely, not always for the better. It was the start of the decline in electoral participation and it reduced the ability of politicians to make significant change, as well, since they were no longer as firmly in control of all levels of the bureaucracy.

This speaks to the fact that revolutions can come from the left or the right, from elites or populists. To be against Keynesian economics, redistribution, and for oligarchy in the 1970s was to be a radical. Nixon believed in Keynesian politics, wanted universal healthcare, and started the Environmental Protection Agency.

The radicals on the right won: They broke the unions, concentrated wealth and power in the hands of people who would continue to support their policies, and eventually changed the effective interpretation of law and the constitution to gut the first and fourth amendments, the presumption of innocence, and the safeguards put in place to make sure that money was not the deciding factor in elections or policy making.

To be a radical is neither innately good nor innately bad. As with all other human endeavours, it depends on what the radicals are trying to accomplish (their ends) and how they do it (their means). We celebrate a great number of violent radicals every year in various national holidays, and daily revile radicals, peaceful or violent, with whom we disagree.

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The Role of the Intellectual

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On April 20, 2015

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Edward Said,  (h/t Adam Johnson):

Nothing in my view is more reprehensible than those habits of mind in the intellectual that induce avoidance, that characteristic turning away from a difficult and principled position which you know to be the right one, but which you decide not to take. You do not want to appear too political; you are afraid of seeming controversial; you need the approval of a boss or an authority figure; you want to keep a reputation for being balanced, objective, moderate; your hope is to be asked back, to consult, to be on a board or prestigious committee, and so, to remain within the responsible mainstream; someday you hope to get an honorary degree, a big prize, perhaps even an ambassadorship. For an intellectual these habits of mind are corrupting par excellence. If anything can denature, neutralise, and finally kill a passionate intellectual life, it is these considerations, internalised and so to speak in the driver’s seat.

Exactly.  And if you do this, you become a “serious person.” You’re wrong about everything that matters, if when your advice is followed, it causes disaster, but you are well taken care of.

John Edwards

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On April 17, 2015

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Picture of John Edward

Picture of John Edwards

(Back to the top because people still don’t understand this.)

His trial has been declared a mistrial.

The personal is not the political. His wife seemed like a good person, but I could care less. FDR cheated on his wife. JFK screwed hookers in the White House pool while married.

The facts about John Edwards that I care about are these:

1) He was the only major politician who made a big issue of poverty.

2) He was the only major politician to say he didn’t believe in the war on terror.

3) The reason the affair came to light is because he stopped paying her off, which he did because he was no longer in the race.

The children who thought that having a black president, despite the fact that he was, on domestic policy, worse than EVERY other democratic nominee, are why the US is so fucked right now. (And yes, he was worse on domestic policy than even Hillary Clinton. Don’t believe me, believe Paul Krugman.)

Edwards trial was a politically motivated show trial. The goal was to make sure that everyone thinks that there was no left wing candidate in the election and that Obama is the best you could ever do. Well, that and a personal hatred, as best I can tell. Obama refused to cut a deal with Edwards for support. What did Edwards ask for in exchange for support? Help for the poor.

Obama did cut a deal with Clinton, of course. He let her have State, so she could influence foreign policy, the ONE policy area where she was to his right.

(Originally published May 31, 2012)

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Identity Markers Do Not Make You Left Wing

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On April 17, 2015

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In Ontario, Canada, Premier Kathleen Wynne has announced that she will privatize Ontario Hydro. This will (I guarantee) result in higher prices for power and a worse safety record, because private investors require more profits than public ones. Because Ontario Hydro does make some money, it will also result in the Ontario government having less income going forward.

Wynne is also allowing beer to be sold in grocery stores, breaking the previous oligopoly held by one private company (for beer only) and the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. This will mean less money for the government as well. This is something for which the right has campaigned for ages.

These are both right wing policy initiatives and the Hydro privatization, in particular, is terrible.

Kathleen Wynne belongs to the Liberal party and she is a lesbian.

At the time of the campaign to replace the previous Liberal leader and Premier of Ontario, I pointed out that Wynne was a neoliberal.  She is, in fact, a more extreme neoliberal than the previous leader, McGuinty, who was also terrible.

But, because she is a lesbian, people on the left would not heed my warning.

This is similar to what happened in 2008 in America. Barack Obama is African American. Too many people could not wrap their head around the idea that he was also very right wing, despite how much he praised Ronald Reagan. The guilty white liberals who self-identify with the civil rights movement particularly felt the need for the symbolic victory of a black man in the White House, no matter how bad his policies would be.

The results are in. Obama:

  • Vastly increased drone assassination;
  • Surged in Afghanistan;
  • Attacked Libya;
  • Prosecuted and persecuted whistle blowers more than the last ten Presidencies put together;
  • Oversaw an expansion in which only the top 5% saw any improvement in their income;
  • Oversaw an economy which was more unequal than any since the Gilded Age and worse than Bush Jr’s;
  • And far, far more.

But hey, he’s African American. Who cares about all the people he killed overseas and all the people in America who are in poverty as a result of his venal economic policies?

Now we’re about to repeat this with Hillary Clinton, who wants to be the first woman President. A woman president would be a good thing, symbolically, and so on, but how about having a good president instead?

Simply belonging to a discriminated against minority does not guarantee that a candidate will personally pursue policies which help everyone and which don’t favor the wealthy. The first people to break out of discriminated groups and gain real power are almost always collaborators.

As long as we continue using sexual orientation, skin color, or other identity markers as proxies for solid, left wing policy, we can continue to expect having our livelihoods destroyed.

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Learned Hopelessness About Using Government for Good

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On April 16, 2015

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Seems that some of my commenters think that using government for good would be hard to do. Going with the theory that every comment indicates some number of readers who believe the same, let’s explore this notion in further depth. This kind of doubt is more important than it seems, because it speaks to the weird, modern idea that governments are powerless to control how money is spent by individuals or corporations, when, in fact, it’s dead easy.

The tax system is also set up to catch stuff like this. No income declared from your property? Hmmm… do you have family members living there for free? Go inspect.

You can also supplement this with things like checking meters, checking mail delivery, and checking IR maps to see if the heat or air conditioning is on. (All this before we even get to the government’s real surveillance abilities). I guarantee the salaries of the people doing the inspections will be far exceeded by the fines and the money earned from auctions of seized properties.

This sort of thing is not only dirt easy, actually enforcing it is profitable for government, just as auditing corporations and rich people is VERY profitable. So every time your government reduces auditors your tax service you should ask why.

No, as usual, this is an easily solved problem that people refuse to solve either because of learned helplessness or because it is profitable for them (and politicians) for the problem to remain unsolved.

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The Solution to Ghost Apartments Is Obvious and Predictably Overlooked

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On April 14, 2015

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So, one of the reasons we have resurgent housing bubbles in world cities like New York, London, Hong Kong, and Toronto is because of foreigners who buy apartments and then leave them empty. Newsweek has a good article on ghost apartments, but I want to focus on this because it’s symptomatic of why we can’t fix almost anything:

In Singapore and Hong Kong, officials tried to slow the spread of absentee-owned luxury housing by limiting mortgages.

….

To encourage owners to occupy their units or sell, New York state legislation has been drafted to impose a progressive tax on vacant luxury apartments worth $5 million or more. The proposed levy would start at one-half of 1 percent and rise to 4 percent on values above $20 million.

People who can afford luxury apartments can afford that fee. Make it simple: Put in a residency requirement. Someone must live in the apartment six months a year. If they don’t, the tax rate is 50% of the ostensible value of the apartment. If that doesn’t work (and it might not, given how rich they are), well, then just make it illegal to own apartments that aren’t used and have the government seize the apartment and use it for social housing, or sell it. And if the next owner doesn’t use it, seize it again.

Lest you think this isn’t a serious problem, understand this: Every unused apartment raises the rent of every other apartment in the city and increases the cost of every other condo in the city. This is supply that is artificially off the market. Because people don’t live in these apartments, local businesses don’t have as many customers. Meanwhile, the high prices of luxury apartments for which there is no actual local demand drives up real-estate prices, which drives up taxation. Everyone pays more in taxes, rent, or mortgages to subsidize foreigners who aren’t even using the condos.

The same is true for houses.

Rich people who want to visit world cities can suck it up and pay for a hotel. There are plenty of hotels that cost thousands of dollars a day (tens of thousands aren’t uncommon, but ordinary people will never even see these listed), which are suitable for their “needs.”

The are many problems like this which are easy enough to fix by either extremely punitive taxation and fines or by just forbidding these destructive actions.

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The Sheer Idiocy of Helicopter Parenting

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On April 13, 2015

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So, we have another case of children not being under constant supervision, some idiot reporting it, and cops treating it seriously:

Last month, the two [parents] were found responsible for unsubstantiated child neglect for allowing their kids, 10-year-old Rafi and 6-year-old Dvora, to walk home alone in December. …

The kids had been playing at a park about a mile away and the Meitivs, both scientists, encouraged them to walk home on their own as a lesson in self-reliance.

Oooh. A mile. I used to spend all day wandering around by myself. I went to the downtown YMCA in Vancouver, far more than a mile away, by myself. My school was about a mile away and I walked there and home by myself. I went out and played street hockey and my parents had no idea where I was; it was usually at least half a mile away.

It’s true that the world has changed, mind you: Stranger-crime afflicting children is way down. This might be because of all the helicopter parenting, I grant you, but there’s no credible argument that America or Canada is now more dangerous for children than it was 30 or 40  years ago.

In fact, if something bad is going to happen to your child, a few over-reported cases aside, it will almost certainly be done to them by a family member, a friend of the family, or another trusted adult. The people who are goddamn scary to children, dangerous to children, are the people you trust, not strangers.

Meanwhile, absent unsupervised playtime, absent learning how to handle themselves around strangers, the children don’t properly develop independence or creativity. (Measures of creativity are now in multi-generational decline, coinciding with the rise of helicopter parenting.)

Keeping children so safe they never learn how to be independent, creative adults who are able to take care of themselves is no favor to them. It’s an indulgence in fear. I was going to school by myself in grade two. I was walking Calcutta slums by myself in my early teens. I was traveling by myself in my teens as well.

And yeah, the bad things that happened to me, I can tell you, all happened at the hands of trusted adults and the bad things I suffered at the hands of other children ALL happened at school, supposedly a supervised place.

Binding children hand and foot doesn’t teach them safety, it teaches them fear and dependence.

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A Clintonian Coronation?

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On April 12, 2015

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Hilary Clinton Secretary of State Portrait

Hilary Clinton Secretary of State Portrait

So, Hilary has made it official. Last time she was the front-runner and lost, but this time there are no particularly strong presumptive nominees: no Obama, nobody even as strong as Edwards was.

Clinton’s negatives are terrible and she has a lot of baggage. The right will hammer her on Bengazi, but more serious to left-wingers is Iraq and the larger picture of foreign policy when she was Secretary of State. Libya’s a complete mess, the Arab Spring failed and gave way to more repressive states, ISIS rose (albeit its spectacular breakout was after her resignation), and so on.

Back in 2008, I read the three major campaigns’ policy documents and releases carefully–it was my job. Edwards was the most left-wing candidate, the other two weren’t even close. Not a lot separated Clinton and Obama on substantive issues, but, generally speaking, she was slightly to his left on domestic bread and butter issues and slightly to his right on foreign affairs. It is instructive that her post was at State.

When Lincoln Chafee declared his candidacy for the Democratic nomination last week, he was very explicit about Iraq; Chafee was the only Republican to vote against the war. Say what one will, that took integrity and guts. Clinton likes to say she makes “hard choices,” but it’s not clear to me what those choices are. Her “hard choices” are generally of the “make your bones” variety: Do what the elites want and shove it down the throats of ordinary people.

The main exceptions would be in terms of women’s rights, in which she genuinely believes and for which she has fought.

Can Clinton beat the Republican candidate–most likely Jeb Bush? Well, her negatives are high and she’s trying to extend a Democratic presidency which has been pretty awful on the economy (many people will try to pretend otherwise, they are either stupid, in the top 5% or so who have done well, or on the payroll). On the other hand, identification with the Democratic party is significantly higher (almost 10%) than with the Republican party. That’s a significant advantage.

This far out, I don’t know. There are weaknesses in a Clinton candidacy. This is not 2008, where the election was the Democratic nominee’s to lose. The real election in 2008 was the Democratic primary, everyone knew it, and that’s why the fight was so vicious.

Personally, of the people who have put themselves forward so far I like Chafee the best. He seems to have some actual integrity and is at least saying most of the right things. He doesn’t appear to have much of a chance; like every other Democratic nominee so far he’s about waiting for Clinton to stumble.

I think coronating Clinton is most likely a mistake, though, and not just because I don’t like her politics. She needs to be tested properly in competitive primaries. The Clinton of the late 2008 campaign was a fierce campaigner, but she’s bungled a great deal before and since then.

May the best candidate for America, and the world, win.

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